


ways to get back to the garden (seven short fics for Porn Battle XV)

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: AO3 1 Million, Adopted Sibling Incest, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Porn Battle, bundled together to keep things sorta tidy, collection of short fics, mostly pre-series, no major spoilers but see notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:52:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1189248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I looked at our reflection, at how George was smiling between kisses, and asked, "So what are you looking at?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"You." Her breath was hot on my ear. "I'm looking at how lucky I am." She wasn't making any attempt at putting on a seductive voice, and it was all the sexier for how matter-of-fact she was.</i>
</p><p>A collection of seven short fics written for Porn Battle XV. All of them are pre-series but the fifth, which takes place during <i>Feed</i> but is essentially spoiler-free, and the seventh, which takes place about halfway through <i>Feed</i> and has a few spoilers up to that point in the book. The prompt(s) and any content notes for individual stories/"chapters" are included in the notes just below.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (Shaun) See Yourself Like I Do

**Author's Note:**

> Collective title from "Yes Anastasia", by Tori Amos.
> 
> Thanks to wildpear for going over most of these for me, usually on very short notice. ^_^
> 
> 1) "See Yourself Like I Do"; Shaun POV; prompts - mirrors, hotels, body worship; age 17; would be tagged with - underage drinking, pre-negotiated drunk sex, watching, delayed orgasm
> 
> 2) "Performance Art"; Shaun POV; prompt - frottage; age 17; would be tagged with - negotiation, masturbation, getting off on watching
> 
> 3) "Something in the Air"; Georgia POV; prompt - storms; age ~early 20s
> 
> 4) "In the Early Hours"; Shaun POV; prompt - stakeout; age ~early 20s
> 
> 5) "The Best of It"; Georgia POV; prompt - impulse; set during _Feed_ , with no particular spoilers.
> 
> 6) "Distraction"; Shaun POV; prompt - homework; age 17; would be tagged with - hands and knees, fellatio, patience, teasing
> 
> 7) "The Comfort of the Familiar"; Georgia POV; prompt - comfort; set during _Feed_ , with a few spoilers up to about halfway through the book.

George and I learned to fuck in hotel bathrooms.

She'd say that's not literally true. We learned to fuck at home, mostly in her bed, where we learned almost everything we know about sex. And since "fucking" was what we usually called it, well, there you go.

The summer before we started twelfth grade, Mom and Dad decided we were taking a family road trip in August, in the two weeks between our online classes wrapping up and school starting again, and nothing George and I said changed their minds. We spent two weeks smiling for the cameras through gritted teeth, escaping now and then to do our own blogging, since we had our B-class licenses.

The good news was that they didn't want to share a room with us any more than we wanted to share with them, so we were free once we finally managed to get away in the evenings. Most nights, if George's head wasn't hurting her--which it was, a lot of the time, 'cause we were driving through mostly-sunny states in the dead of summer--we spent a couple hours doing safe things like reading and blogging and gaming, and then we had sex.

We learned to fuck _efficiently_ in hotel bathrooms. We learned to get on our knees for each other, to give each other oral without giving ourselves neck aches or bruising our knees on the tiled floors. I learned to fuck her up against those rock-solid walls, with her legs around my waist; she learned the most comfortable angles for bending forward over sinks, which despite how it sounds was usually slow and gentle. Doing her like that left me free to stroke her body and kiss her shoulders and the back of her neck and behind her ears.

It let us watch each other in the mirror, and if I hadn't already had a bit of a thing for watching her come, that would've cemented it. But it added a new facet, because she could see herself, and that? Was unbelievably hot.

In the final hotel, where we had a three-night reservation, it turned out the manager was a huge fan of Mom's. When we checked in we "mysteriously" got upgraded to a pair of expensive-looking suites that were conveniently at opposite ends of the building from each other. George and I spent a few minutes poking around ours, admiring the size of the beds and the quantity of pillows. There was even an impressive complimentary liquor selection, which apparently no one had connected to the fact that we were underage and in the room alone.

And then there was the bathroom--or bath _rooms_ , in practice, because the sink and toilet were all screened off in one corner. That left the main space--bigger that some entire hotel rooms we'd been in--which featured a huge jacuzzi tub, a shower head with about a hundred settings...and a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror. George took one look at that and started laughing, because she knew exactly what I'd want to do.

She wasn't wrong, and she was plenty willing. I fucked her in front of it every one of those nights, taking her from behind and holding her against me so we could watch her body arching with need and pleasure. It worked out for both of us: I loved the view, and she loved how I talked to her while I stared at our reflection and told her how hot she was, how awesome it was to see her whole body. _Look at yourself, George,_ I whispered in her ear, both of us up on our knees. _Know how I can tell how horny you are?_ , and I'd talk her through it, all the little tells from the quiver in her thigh muscles to the way she let her head drop, the way she responded when I rubbed a hand over her throat--just a touch there, no pressure at all even when she leaned into it.

I never fucked her until she told me to. Sometimes she dragged it out, rubbing back against my erection and watching _my_ face in the mirror until I was so hot for her that it felt like my heart would burst.

###

On our last night at that hotel, we raided the liquor stash. Neither of us were heavy drinkers; our parents made it clear back when we were fifteen or so that they wouldn't ask questions as long as we were responsible and didn't make the news, and that prospect would've kept us from doing anything too stupid even if we wanted to. But we definitely weren't going anywhere for the rest of the night, and Mom had been on George's case all day--not that that was unusual, but what _was_ unusual was that George still got through the whole day without feeling like her head was gonna split right open.

We got back to our suite, examined the room service menu for food that would still be good if we didn't eat it right away, and hashed out our alcohol-related plans for the evening before our dinner arrived. The verdict was that I'd only drink enough to get a good buzz on--partly so we wouldn't both be useless if anything went wrong, and partly because George was characteristically frank about her plans for my dick.

Booze had never given me any problems with staying hard, but there's a first time for everything, and neither of us felt like risking it. So I did a couple shots of vodka, and George spiked the living hell out of some cranberry juice. She got herself all warm and mellow, and then she got me to take her clothes off, and by the time she was naked we were in the ridiculously fancy bathroom.

She was being aggressive in a way that turns me on like nobody's business, practically yanking my clothes off while she kissed me. We'd been accumulating thick, plushy towels since checking in, and we laid most of them on the floor, cushioning our knees and shins when we knelt down.

George's frenzied kisses didn't translate into immediate sex. Moderately intoxicated or not, she'd made up her mind about what she wanted, and that started with turning the tables on me pretty quickly, getting me to kneel facing the mirror with her behind me.

She began by kissing my shoulders and the back of my neck--open-mouthed, wet kisses that made me groan for her. Her breasts were pressed into my back, her hands were roaming over my body, and I was so hard and ready that my hips kept jerking against her touch, thrusting a little. I looked at our reflection, at how she was smiling between kisses, and asked, "So what are you looking at?"

"You." George nipped the crook of my neck, not too hard, but harder than I'd expected. "All of you." Her tongue swirled over the same spot, warning me before she started sucking. It felt better than it had any right to, combined with her arms around me and her body so taut and warm with desire against my back; everything about what she was doing felt like she was trying to get me off, except that her hands were caressing everywhere _but_ my cock.

Her breath was hot on my ear when she stopped sucking and kissing the base of my neck. "I'm looking at how lucky I am." She wasn't making any attempt at putting on a seductive voice, and it was all the sexier for how matter-of-fact she was. Then her tone gentled, as she added, "I'm lucky to have _you_ ," with the subtle emphasis that made it clear she wasn't talking about my body anymore.

I turned a little in her arms, enough that I could look at her face directly, instead of in the mirror. "Not half as lucky as I am."

George made a soft little sound that both cut straight to my heart and sent a raw surge of heat through me, making me ache for her body even more. I turned further, so I could get my hand on the nape of her neck and pull her mouth to mine.

We have total faith in each other's love, and for that alone, I feel luckier than most people are ever likely to get. But sometimes we kissed like this anyway, crushing and yearning and affirming it, and my gut feeling was that that was never going to change, no matter how many years we spent in each other's arms.

Somewhere in that kiss, what we were doing shifted; God only knows how I could tell that George had decided to stop taking what she wanted from me and put herself in my hands instead, but I could. Keeping my mouth close enough that my lips still brushed hers, I said, "I want you so much right now." My voice came out low and rough, making her shiver in response, and when I kissed her again, she yielded to it completely.

If there was one specific reason for her drinking, that was it; she wasn't _drunk_ , not even close, but she'd had enough to at least wear away at the control she can never let go of entirely, even with me.

"I want you so much," I repeated, whispering. "But don't make me come. I want to feel like this for as long as I can."

"Okay," she whispered back. "Do you need a break?"

"Yeah." I was aroused enough that either of us actually touching my cock would make it a real effort to not orgasm; I wasn't at all sure I'd succeed.

George nodded her understanding, and shifted so we were kneeling face to face. I leaned forward and rested my head on her shoulder, and then had to shut my eyes so I wasn't staring right down at her breasts, at how soft and inviting they were--inviting me to fill my hands with their weight, to kiss and lick and suck every tender bit of skin, to rest my head against her heartbeat--and past them to where her thighs were pressed together, almost entirely concealing what I wanted most.

I could close my eyes, but I couldn't change how well I was coming to know the feel of her body, or that I was inhaling the now-familiar smell of her arousal. It went to my head more effectively than anything we could find in the room's well-stocked bar, but it was comfortable, too.

"God, I love you," I said, after I'd managed to slow my breathing enough that my heart rate followed suit.

Her shoulders rose and fell in a silent laugh of delight. "Same to you."

I kissed her neck without opening my eyes, working my tongue up along the cords of her throat to her jaw, up behind her earlobe, bumping my nose against the arm of her sunglasses where it curved behind her ear. She took a quick, sharp breath when my teeth grazed her skin.

"It's your last night with the world's biggest mirror," she said. "Better start taking advantage of it."

"Sounds good." I kissed her lobe, toying briefly with her earring--one of the simple titanium studs that were usually all she wore, keeping her piercings open for earrings that hid cameras. She had a couple pairs of _those_ that were the most blatantly feminine things she owned, and incorporated cameras that were worth noticeably more than the jewelry component. I'd squirreled money away for months to give her both pairs for our sixteenth birthday, and they looked damn good on her.

"Turn around," I said, and George turned to face the mirror, still laughing a little with anticipation.

I looked over her shoulder at our reflection. I told her again that I loved her. And then I started touching her in earnest, with her watching every move I made.

###

"See how you look with your legs spread like that?" I murmured in her ear half an hour later. We were only a few feet from the glass, me sitting on my heels and George sprawled against me, her ass against my hips and my hard-on nestled between my lower abs and the small of her back.

It wasn't just her legs that were spread; I had my hands between her thighs, holding her so open we could both see the shadowed pink of her cunt in the mirror. The whole time, I'd been talking steadily to her the same way I usually did-- _"You look so good. So beautiful, so fucking hot, I want to fuck you so bad"_ \--and she was like liquid in my arms, relaxed and content and giggly.

I rubbed a finger right between her legs, delving just deep enough to feel how slick and warm she was. She was more than ready--so wet she was almost dripping with it. I slipped both forefingers and both middle fingers into her and tugged gently, exposing her as completely as I could. She angled her body a little to give me an even better look at her reflection, and I bit my tongue in a futile attempt to choke down the helpless noise that came out of my mouth. I could see _inside_ her, just a tiny bit, and I'd gone down on her often enough that my mind easily filled in the visuals of how my cock would slide in-- _right there_ \--and push her open, push until I was all the way inside her.

I was so turned on, and so fixated on the sight of her, that I nearly lost it right there. I had to shut my eyes and just breathe again, steady and slow, until I was sure I wasn't going to come right up her back just from looking.

George reached behind her and gripped my cock, pressing it right against the base of her spine. "I want you in me now."

I kissed the base of her skull, burying my nose in the fringe of her hair, and didn't try to keep the strain of needing her out of my reply. "And I want to be in you."

Saying that came naturally to us both. We both meant it the way it sounded; George's whole body was quivering with the same message of _"Put your cock inside me before I lose my mind"_. But the words came so easily because of how thoroughly we'd always been inside each other, filling each other's hearts and thoughts while we grew together like the roots of two trees planted practically on top of each other.

She let go and dropped her hands to my thighs, holding on while she repositioned herself up on her knees. I still had a hand between her legs, making it easy to get a good angle in one go. She sank right down on me, enveloping my cock and gasping the way I've loved since the very first time, like she was surprised--very pleasantly surprised--by the sensation of being penetrated, of her body working around mine.

"Squeeze me," I said, muttered it against her neck because I wasn't ready to look yet, not if she was going to tighten her muscles on me, clutch me inside her like an embrace.

George squeezed, and I felt the world swim, even though I couldn't see.

I kept my face pressed to her shoulder blade while I slid an arm around her, caressed her breasts and down over her belly before settling my hand between her legs and doing some squeezing of my own, gentle pulses with her clit between my fingers. My other hand settled on her ass, and she started rocking on me--not lifting herself up and coming down on me, but rotating her hips, slow and sure.

I didn't let myself move at all, other than my fingers, but it was still like I was moving inside her, rubbing every bit of her inner walls with my cock until she found exactly what she wanted. The motion of her hips changed, became a steady undulation that kept us rubbing together in the same place.

She was breathing harder and shallower all the time, gasping every few breaths. Her voice kept breaking a little, even though that was the only sound she was making.

And then her fingers were on the back of my hand, telling me what she meant when she said, "Harder," sounding like it hurt to say even that much. I worked her clit harder, and all in a rush she choked out, "If you want to watch, watch now."

I lifted my head and opened my eyes, and I watched--watched her body curve back like a bow and her face tighten in pure concentration while she climaxed. She didn't make much noise. She just _moved_ , the rhythm of her hips stuttering instead of flowing while she shuddered on top of me.

She shifted her weight while her muscles were still pulsing around my cock, making it easier for me to move. Her hands closed over mine, moving them to her hips; the fingers that had been stimulating her were slick, and a faint trail of wetness marked their path across her skin.

We stared at each other in the mirror, her gaze intense even from behind her sunglasses, and every thrust into her felt impossibly good after forcing myself to hold off for so long. It didn't take many before I was on the verge of orgasm, and right on the edge, I realized how I was breathing and that I was probably going to make an ungodly amount of noise.

George was watching me as closely as I'd been watching her, and she did--something--while I came, something I couldn't stop and focus on. I was too wracked with pleasure and relief, with the feel of her, the scent and taste--

_Taste_ tipped me off a moment later, as my brain reluctantly reengaged to figure out what George was doing. I was tasting her skin because she'd reached back over her head and knotted the fingers of one hand in my hair, keeping my head forward so she could shove her forearm against my mouth to muffle the desperate sounds I'd made--that I was still making, quieter now. The warm, salt-tinged flavor of her sweat and skin were there because my mouth was open, not quite biting down on her wrist.

"Hey," she murmured, taking her wrist away before I could see whether I'd left any really incriminating marks on her. She turned her head as far as she could and tugged mine further so she could kiss me. It was awkward and sidelong, but I would've been happy to keep doing it for a really long time.

George, not so much. She sighed across my lips, said, "Fuck it," and slid off my cock so she could turn around fully. We reached for each other in sync, settling into each other's arms to kiss properly. George's mouth still tasted a little of cranberry, but she was steady enough to pass for sober.

I stopped kissing her to ask about her wrist, but made it only as far as "Show me--" before she was pressing her lips hard against mine again, lifting her arm into my line of sight. Her wrist was a little red from my mouth, but nothing that would last until morning.

I relaxed, and our kisses slowed until we were just leaning wearily against each other.

"Don't take this the wrong way," George said, gesturing vaguely at the mirror, "because this part of being away was fun, but I'll be so glad to get home."

"Me too." Experimenting and playing around with new things together was awesome, and sharing a hotel room meant _sleeping_ in the same room, but I missed the familiar, dark coziness of George's bedroom, almost as much as I missed being able to get away from our parents.

It wasn't long before her head settled on my shoulder, getting heavier as she dozed off. I'd have to wake her soon, before kneeling on the hard floor left us too stiff to be comfortable on the drive home, but the thick towels under us were helping with that. And she was nearly asleep in my arms, shivering just a little and snuggling closer for my warmth.

I looked at our reflection, at George curled up against me, and decided to stay right where I was a while longer. If we ached a little in the morning from being on the floor too long, it'd fade quickly enough that in a week we'd barely remember it. But this part, getting to hold her and revel in the sight of her bare skin and her content, sleepy little smile, would be a memory to cherish for a long time.


	2. (Shaun) Performance Art

I've always been in the habit of touching George when she's working in arm's reach, whenever I don't need both hands on the keyboard--"always" meaning "since we were kids", not "since we began sleeping together". And she's always liked it, in most moods, so I was caught off guard when she lifted my hand off her shoulder and put it back on her desk. She squeezed it a little in the process, and not like she was annoyed, so I seriously had no idea how to interpret her response.

"What?" I asked.

"I don't feel like having sex."

"Uh...okay." I stared at her profile, baffled. "I didn't say anything about sex."

"You didn't have to. You touch me differently when you're horny." George spun her chair to face me. "Am I wrong?"

I shook my head, because she was right. I was working on an essay on some key variations between three different film versions of _Macbeth_ and trying to keep focused on the different ways various lines were delivered, not the difference in camera techniques, so I wasn't really thinking about sex, but it had been a couple of days since we'd been naked together. I couldn't _not_ be aware of it when she was sitting so close.

The idea that she was aware that I was reacting to her anyway was cool, and also slightly disconcerting. "I wasn't assuming anything," I said.

"I know. I just thought I should tell you."

"Gotcha." I touched her arm affectionately, feeling hyper-conscious of both of us--of myself, because I didn't want to send out the same signals if I could help it, and of her too, because I couldn't just not notice how perfect touching her always feels.

I got back to work on my essay, and had written about a page and a half when I felt George's eyes on me. Then I noticed she'd stopped typing, which merited a glance up. "Hmm?"

"I still don't want to have sex," she said. I frowned at her, mildly annoyed at her insistence when I still hadn't said anything about sex, and I wasn't _going_ to, since she'd answered preemptively. The burgeoning irritation was contagious; she sighed, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm repeating myself for a reason, Shaun."

"What's up?"

"Since I don't want sex, will it be too frustrating for you if I sit on your lap for a while?"

"No," I said, not sure what to make of that. It sounded cuddlier than her usual MO, and that was a little strange, but it also sounded fine. It wasn't like I was fourteen and needing a cold shower every time we stayed in physical contact for more than a few minutes.

George smiled in a way that was half-amused, half-uncertain. "I think we're thinking of different things." She saved and closed her files and moved from her chair to mine--and yeah, we'd been thinking of different things. It turned out what she had in mind was straddling me, with my half-hard--make that fully hard--cock between her legs. She leaned close to get her mouth by my ear, pressing herself up against me in the process, and whispered, "This feels really good. Is it still okay?"

It was a very different okay than I'd originally had in mind. "Yeah."

"Tell me if you want me to get off," she said, and then stopped, processing what had just come out of her mouth. She grinned when I laughed. "Okay, I deserve that."

I bumped my nose against hers. "Yes, I can tell you if I need you to vacate my lap."

Instead of pulling back at all, George pressed her forehead to mine. "Thanks."

We stayed like that for a while. George kept moving on me just the tiniest bit, like she was half off in her own world, and she didn't say anything. But neither of us were wearing heavy pants, so I could feel her getting more and more aroused, on top of how I could hear her breathing quickening.

I kissed her cheek instead of her mouth, trying to be careful with her in whatever mood this was. It made her back arch and her hips move in a way that I really, really liked. I bit back a moan, but my voice shook with it as I said, "George, I'm not pushing, but it sure as hell _feels_ like you're turned on."

"I am," she replied, drawing back to look at me. "I don't want to fuck, that's all." Her expression was earnest, open in a way I knew she tried to always be when we talked about sex. "I just want this."

"Okay." This time I did kiss her mouth, keeping it gentle. "I don't really get it, but it's all right."

"So tell me when to stop."

 _That_ struck me as downright weird; we'd done a lot of groping and grinding through our clothes back before we started actually having sex, and we'd both enjoyed giving and getting orgasms that way. "Does it feel too much like fucking if I come like this?"

"Yes." She answered readily, but there was an edge to it that was both defensive and vulnerable. "But we're not having sex because I don't want to, and we won't do this either if you don't want to."

"No, I want to," I said. "And when I start feeling desperate to come, I'll tell you. Sound good?"

"Yeah." She kissed me with relief, and I let her set the pace for the kisses that followed--lots of them, now that she was sure I understood her. Her pace was _hungry_ , all shallow kisses that let her suck and bite my lips a little, too light to even sting.

It felt great, being all wrapped up in her arms and her scent, feeling her hunger. She wasn't grinding down on me too much, so I lasted a good half hour or so before it started getting frustrating. It wasn't even that I needed to get off immediately, but my body wanted more--more something, anything, to get me closer to orgasm.

I put my hands on George's shoulders, and the way she was kissing me changed, getting softer before she took her mouth away from mine. "Stop," I said, even though stopping was the last thing I wanted her to do.

She stopped. We looked at each other for a few seconds, long enough for me to stare at the color in her cheeks and listen to the way she was breathing. She was every bit as turned on as I was.

"Stay here?" she asked.

If she wanted me to stay nearby, that was cool with me; my whole body was aching to fuck her, but I wanted the closeness of it, not just the climax. I teased her a little anyway. "You want to watch me jerk off, huh?"

"Yes," she said simply. "I do. Are you all right with that?"

"With doing it, or with you wanting it?" I shook my head before she could answer. "Never mind. The answer's 'yes' either way."

God knows I'm used to showing off for her. That made it easy to strip and climb onto her bed with her, where we'd already had sex dozens of times, and show off for her in a different way. And usually masturbating requires _some_ kind of fantasizing, but there was no fantasy required with George watching me the way she was.

The word "performance" gets thrown around a lot with sex, and I'd never liked it much. I've got a lot of the typical socialized male pride--I want to fuck her as hard as she wants, for as long as she wants, and I want to make her come until she can't see straight. Doing those things makes me feel good about myself, on top of the part where it's _George_ and I want to make her feel amazing. But I know performance, and that's not it. That's doing something with her, or sometimes to her, depending.

This was different, even though we were both there and both engaged. George didn't touch me at all at first, apparently content to sit back and observe while I stroked myself for her. From time to time her attention changed, turning more analytical; around the third time I realized it was because I was doing something a little or a lot different than what she'd been doing when she got her hands on my cock, so after that I kept doing whatever-it-was longer than I would have otherwise, when I noticed her looking at me that way.

I could practically see her taking notes when I jerked myself harder, when I worked my foreskin in a way she hadn't tried or thumbed the head of my cock right along the slit, when I touched my balls more than she tended to--all that data was getting filed away in that sharp mind I love so much, and seeing her do it was hotter than it had any right to be.

As I was getting really close she moved, leaning over me to bring her lips to mine. When I opened my mouth she took the hint and started French-kissing me, deep and eager and demanding. She kept kissing me while I came, while my hips jerked up and I fucked into my own hand, imagining the familiar heat of her body enveloping me.

Whatever sounds escaped my mouth vanished into hers, into her sweet, greedy kisses, until I was panting and dragging my fingers lightly along my cock to ease the shock of dropping from fevered arousal back down into a calmer, more normal state. George kept kissing me, helping me draw the last of the pleasure out; she didn't stop until I did.

And finally we were just breathing together, her still bent over me, still almost mouth to mouth, sharing a moment of satisfaction--I'd done exactly what she wanted, and she was responding with the pleasure of a spectator swept away by a performance.

She was obviously thinking along the exact same lines, because she started laughing quietly when she finally lifted her head and said, with mingled love and amusement and pleasure, "Thank you for the show."


	3. (Georgia) Something in the Air

There's talking in code, and then there's just knowing each other well enough to extrapolate from context. When Shaun called me to say he'd be home early from zombie-baiting because of the weather, I took one look at the weather widgets on my screen and knew exactly what else he was saying.

He was saying, _There's a storm coming, and I feel it all over my skin, and I really, really, really hope you'll feel like fucking when I get home_.

I don't feel storms the way Shaun does, and sometimes I'm _not_ in the mood and can't flip a switch and make myself feel like it. That can be hard on both of us, because he can't make himself not want it just because I don't. He usually winds up going back out at that point, or not coming home right away after all if I let him know on the phone that I'm not up for it, because the next-best option for him is going to our usual gym and wearing himself out that way.

Other times he lets me know that's what he wants, and I think about it for all of half a second before I suddenly can't _wait_ for him to come home.

**********

We have sex all kinds of ways. Sometimes it's a give-and-take from start to finish; other times one of us does most of the thinking or most of the work, doing both the giving and the taking. Thunderstorms make Shaun horny enough that he can't hold still even if he tries. It's not that they make him extra affectionate, and they don't make him want to get off more than usual. They make him want to _fuck me_.

It took us a while and a lot of talking to be sure we both felt okay about that kind of sex. When we were still in high school, more than once he shut down in a way that disconcerted me until he managed to put it into words: it meant he wanted to get laid so badly that it completely dominated his thoughts, regardless of anything else we might be doing. But he knew my opinion about guys who acted like their girlfriends were there to dispense orgasms on demand, and the idea that I might think he was doing that had him all messed up. It was almost sweet, and it was definitely amusing, even though I shared his frustration when our sex drives didn't mesh as much as we'd both like.

Ultimately, no amount of talking made him get over it entirely. What helped most was when I had one of those days myself, and showed him by example what struck me as the most sensible way of approaching it. We got home from school and put our bags down in our rooms, and I said, "I really want to have sex. Do you?" He said yes, and I did exactly what I'd been thinking about all day: I sat him down on my bed and helped myself to his body, asking if each step along the way was okay. He kept saying yes, and I made sure it was good for him while I was taking what I wanted, and afterwards, I asked, "Do you feel like I used you? In a bad way?"

"No," he said.

"Then trust me not to feel that way about you," I replied, and we were able to move on from there. It still took him a while to get _comfortable_ with the idea of simply telling me he was desperate to fuck, or with the idea that I thought that was as valid as the times when one of us wanted sex mainly for the intimacy. And it wasn't long before we had one of those other nights, when what we both wanted most was the tenderness of just being together, of touching each other in ways that meant _"I love you"_ first and foremost, with _"I want to jump your bones"_ a distant second.

Being together like that, all gentleness and slow-building pleasure, meant I could say _"I never forget that you want this too"_ , and watch all the implications of that sink in.

**********

After Shaun called about the storm that was nearly on top of us, I assessed my workload. Technically I had some work that I could pick away at, but I'd taken care of everything that absolutely needed doing in the next couple of days. Instead, I went and took a shower while I waited, staying under the water longer than usual simply because I had the time. By the time he got back, I'd made myself comfortable in his bed, with his window cracked open to fill the room with the sounds of the wind and the hammering rain that made the evening air so heavy.

One of Shaun's fantasies--one of the ones he's not likely to have fulfilled whether I'm theoretically amenable or not, because we don't live in a world where it's advisable--is to have sex outdoors in a nighttime storm. Letting the storm inside as much as possible is the closest we can come to that.

He scrubbed down when he came home, a faster and harsher shower than mine had been, and came into his room smelling faintly of bleach and moisturizer. The sun was long down by then; if it weren't for the lightning flashes, I would have had my sunglasses off already. Even with them, I had to close my eyes every time the light tore the sky open.

"I think we should cover my eyes," I warned him. Thunder rumbled as I spoke, and I watched Shaun's response to it--easy to see, with him standing beside the bed, as naked as I was.

"You're sure here is okay?"

"I'm sure."

We didn't need to say much after that. I sat up and shut my eyes, and it was only a matter of moments before Shaun unearthed a soft scarf we keep at hand solely for that purpose. He pulled my sunglasses off and set them aside, and blindfolded me as nimbly as he'd lace a pair of boots.

Once my eyes were protected I lay down and stretched for him, arching my spine to show off my breasts the way he loves. The harsh sound that caught in his throat made my toes curl and my back arch again; it made his rough, needy whisper of _"Fuck, George"_ completely unnecessary, but still satisfying to hear.

I heard him open the window further, giving the storm a stronger foothold in the room with us. The bed shifted as he knelt over me, kissing my forehead, then my mouth, and then down along my neck. With Shaun covering me, hardly any of the rain blowing in through the open window touched me. He shivered as it spattered across his back, enjoying even the chill.

He stayed right there, shielding me from the worst of the weather he was welcoming, and he blanketed my throat with kisses and tiny flicks of his tongue, teeth scraping against the skin in not-quite-bites. His fingers explored between my legs, found me wet and started working to get me wetter.

It was his fingers that made me start moaning; Shaun's hands are _strong_ , and deft and calloused from all the gun-handling. It feels good when he uses them to caress me, and incredible when he uses them to fuck me.

He didn't get me off, and I knew as well as he did that it was deliberate. I'm generally happy to keep having sex after I orgasm, and I can usually come again, sometimes repeatedly--and God, does Shaun like making that happen--but he wanted me as hungry as he was. He got me to the point where my hips were moving instinctively, trying to ride his hand from underneath him, and then he took his fingers away. I couldn't keep from grumbling at him, but I didn't resist when he knelt between my legs, rearranging me into the position he wanted--knees hooked over his arms, not up to his shoulders, which I _can_ do but don't usually feel acrobatic enough to bother with.

I didn't need to see to know how he was gazing down at me, at how open and wanting I was. He was teasing himself as much as me, stretching out that last moment before he got his cock into me; a fingertip penetrated me again, just the barest touch, circling--

\--and this time, when he took it away, he followed it with a single, quick motion, pushing deep into me. There was nothing held back, no more teasing--just one steady, hard thrust after another. It felt good, and it sounded even better; the physical noises of sex don't usually do much for me one way or the other, but with Shaun so worked up, gasping and swearing while he took every bit of pleasure from my body that he could, I liked it.

He wasn't being rough, but there was a relentlessness to it: as long as I was enjoying it too, he was going to fuck me until it was impossible for him not to orgasm, and then he was going to come inside me, which I don't mind and he frankly loves. There's a purity to it that _I_ love, when he's so focused on the sensations of being with me that he can't think about anything else. Sometimes being on the receiving end of that sheer, driven lust is as good as the physical enjoyment of him taking what he wants from me.

I didn't come from that, either; I usually don't. But there was satisfaction of a different kind when he came, and so much stimulation that when he was done and was kissing me and using his fingers to rub and caress me inside and out, it wasn't hard at all to let go.

In this mood, Shaun was as relentless about giving me pleasure as he'd been about taking it. He didn't stop until I was almost sobbing his name into his mouth and kisses. My eyes don't know how to cry, but my throat does, and sometimes I can let it happen if he pushes me hard enough.

And he _was_ pushing me hard. My eyes were covered, and the sounds of the storm were nothing but white noise. The partial sensory deprivation made it that much easier for him to overload me with sensation. I was frantic for it to end, and praying he'd keep going. It didn't matter that I couldn't handle what I wanted; I wanted it anyway, and my body was telling him so in every way it could.

He kept fingering and stroking me until I finally pushed back--literally pushed, because the word "stop" was just a meaningless syllable when I reached for it in my head. I groped for his wrist instead, and squeezed when I found it. He responded immediately, withdrawing his fingers and leaving me empty and aching.

Our skin and his sheets were damp with sweat and rain, and the more localized sticky-slick wetness of sex. Shaun kissed me and tucked a blanket around me, giving me a head start on warming back up properly while he got up and closed the window. The noise of the storm still made it through, but the sudden decrease in volume made the sounds of Shaun wiping rainwater off the floor by the bed seem downright loud.

He lay back down with me when he was done, letting me keep some of the blanket--and the beginnings of warmth--between our chests. I still yelped when his skin touched mine, even though he didn't press himself right against me until he'd started warming too.

"That was really great," he said, muffled by the way his face was buried against my neck. "Since I'm gonna have to change the sheets anyway, stay here for a while?"

He doesn't ask for that very often. We read each other well enough that I can typically tell how badly he wants the extra cuddling, and he trusts me to weigh that against my own usual need to be alone in my skin afterwards. He knows that part of me always wants to stay in his arms longer, or forever; that part dreads the moment when my inner switch flips from savoring the closeness to needing breathing room.

So when he does ask me to stay longer, I wait for that internal change. When it comes, I silently tell it to go fuck itself, and I hold him for as long as he needs. It doesn't much matter _why_ he needs it, whether it's because he's under some kind of strain or because he hasn't been getting enough physical contact overall. Or in this case, because the more physically intense sex is, the longer he takes to come down from it.

"Sure," I said. Shaun kissed my throat and reached up to touch the scarf still covering my eyes, questioning wordlessly. I shook my head. "Leave it for now." I didn't want to concentrate on keeping my eyes shut while I held him, or put my sunglasses back on; the storm was passing, and once it was gone I'd be able to open my eyes without discomfort.

Shaun burrowed closer, radiating contentment. I held him tighter, and stayed with him until the thunder and rain stopped, leaving the night air dark and clear and easier to breathe.


	4. (Shaun) In the Early Hours

What no one tells you about stakeouts is that they're boring as hell. Or I guess I should say movies and stuff tell you that, but no one ever believes it. People all think, oh, _my_ stakeout will be interesting and action-packed! And we keep thinking it no matter how many times we're wrong.

Half of the time, sleeping is the most exciting part, and our current stakeout definitely fell into that category.

"You can sleep some more," George said when I stirred. The van was cold and dead quiet in a way that suggested she hadn't moved much more than I had since I shut my eyes to get some rest. The windows were fogged with condensation.

"What time is it?" I sat up, rubbing the crick in my neck. Even if I did go back to sleep, I'd need to find a new position if I wanted to be able to turn my head when I took my turn at keeping watch.

"Just past four."

"Then I've already had six hours."

She shrugged, blowing on her hands. "I'm too tense to sleep anyway, so you might as well."

She was wearing gloves with no fingertips--a Christmas present from Buffy--and holding a steaming cup that smelled like commercial chocolate. I couldn't remember the last time she'd used a hot chocolate packet instead of having Coke, but she really _was_ wide awake if she was drinking something with so little caffeine.

Her hands and head were the only parts of her visible. She was bundled into a thick blanket that was doing its job well enough that she wasn't shivering. She was also still wearing her sunglasses; we hadn't been able to find a parking spot far enough away from our target that blocked the glow from the streetlights well enough for her comfort.

"You've been up for over twenty hours now," I said.

"Tell me about it." She took a slow sip of her drink, holding it in her mouth to draw out as much heat as possible.

"Come sit with me?"

"What am I, your personal lap-warmer?"

I said, "You're the closest thing I've got," and George laughed and untangled herself enough to move from the driver's seat to join me on the passenger side, where I had the seat reclined almost as far as it goes. We rearranged her blanket and mine so we were under both, and she made herself comfortable. It didn't matter if we didn't have direct line of sight on the car of the person we were tailing, with a long-range motion detector set up on the dash. It's not the most efficient thing ever, but at night, with nothing moving out there, it'd pick up either zombies or anyone approaching that car and let us know.

I wrapped my arms tight around her. If we were careful, I could touch her any way I wanted under the blankets without worrying about the minuscule but omnipresent risk of cameras pointed our way.

"Can I try to relax you?" I asked.

George drank the last of her hot chocolate while she thought about the implicit offer. "Necking on stakeout?"

I grinned, glad she wasn't too tense to joke. Getting up to anything in the van always reminded her of what little we knew about old-fashioned drive-in movies and lovers' lanes, when cars were where publicly-virginal sweethearts went to get it on without anyone noticing. George liked the idea of it, of trading school rings and shy glances in public, while furtive groping and fucking happened elsewhere. It didn't ring _that_ true to our situation, but there was enough similarity for entertainment value.

"Necking, heavy petting, whatever," I said, playing along.

"That sounds nice."

*********

Four A.M. in a mostly-deserted parking lot, and we were too close to being in public for either of us to feel safe with her doing much of anything to me. That's just how it is. But I could do stuff to her, so I saw no reason not to, even if it meant being uncomfortable afterwards until I stopped being turned on from doing those things.

George positioned herself more comfortably on my lap, with her back pressed to my chest. We skipped the initial making-out stage for obvious reasons. Instead, I started by stroking her sides, then her belly, then her thighs. I shifted under her when I got hard, letting her feel it against her ass, and kept touching her until she was breathing heavily and rocking the tiniest bit on my leg--not _quite_ enough to cause visible movement in the blankets covering us.

I slipped a thumb under her jeans, circling her navel. "How do you want this?"

"Under everything."

"Your wish is my command." I slid my hands over her waist and unzipped her jeans, adjusted both of our positions minutely, and reached down into her panties--panties that were wet enough to make me moan against the back of her neck. George also likes being touched lightly through her underwear or hard through her pants, depending on her mood, but this was my favorite way: skin to skin, getting my fingers right inside her.

Her head fell back on my shoulder, and I instinctively pressed my free hand against her cheek, turning her face towards my neck. Her sunglasses hid her eyes and I hid the rest of her expression from cameras that we _knew_ weren't there, but defended against all the same.

I kept touching her until she stiffened and said, "Right there," under her breath. I stayed right there, stroking steadily until the building orgasm hit her. I clamped my hand over her mouth, keeping her from crying out too loudly, and just held her while the tension ran out of her muscles and left her limp in my arms.

She made a faint sound of protest when I withdrew my hand, but that was all. Orgasms don't usually knock her for a loop, unlike the way they hit me, but she was so underslept that she had hardly any defense against the chemicals coursing through her brain and telling her it was safe to relax.

Before she could settle in completely, I rolled us both over onto our sides so I'd be able to extricate myself once she was out cold. "Go to sleep," I said, kissing her forehead in a way that would be downright innocent out of context. "It's four-thirty in the morning. I'll wake you up if anything happens, but nothing will."

"Okay," George mumbled, already half unconscious.

**********

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened for the rest of the night, but I kept my eyes open and on that car except when I had to duck into the back of the van and get coffee. When the sun was up high enough for its light to come directly into the window, I shook George awake and handed her water and painkillers, then Coke when she'd swallowed the pills.

"Feel any better?" I asked.

"Getting there." Her smile was tired, but it warmed me as effectively as the steaming coffee.

I smiled back and cupped my hand against the back of her neck. I was chilled and exhausted and bored, and George was in the same shape, but with her there, I was content, too. If that isn't the definition of love, I don't know what is.


	5. (Georgia) The Best of It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is set during _Feed_ , with no particular spoilers.

If I told anyone that working on the Ryman campaign wasn't what we expected, that wouldn't really tell them anything at all. We were only about halfway through, and I occasionally found the time to wonder how I'd theoretically explain it to anyone who wasn't there with us, if there were anyone back home I'd ever want to talk to about it.

I typed it out once at the beginning of a file, just to see how it looked: _This wasn't what we expected_. The sentence sat there, five words strung together alone on the screen, and I closed the file again, leaving it for another day, or another year. There was no point trying to properly process everything until it was over. In the meantime, everyone I could possibly want to talk to about it was on campaign with me, via the internet if not in the flesh.

Whenever we got a day off, it was in name only. It was literally impossible to keep up with everything we needed to do, although with our betas' help we could just about make it _look_ like we were on top of everything, instead of only the absolutely critical things.

But any relationship needs maintenance, even my relationship with Shaun. We're so different from each other, but when things are stressful, we default to treating each other like extensions of ourselves--which sounds horribly unhealthy for both of us, but it's not the worst survival mechanism ever. Shaun is the part of me I try to remember to take care of, and the reverse is true for him. We were doing our best for each other, in and around everything else, but we weren't doing so well for _us_.

So here we were, with a Sunday off so Peter Ryman could go to church without scrutiny for once, and we had to approve; anything he could manage at this point to ease some of the strain he was under could only be a good thing. Emily had flown in to see him the day before, and that meant Shaun and Buffy and I had had the most satisfying meal we'd managed in at least a fortnight. Emily Ryman doesn't take no for an answer to questions like "would Peter's lovely blogging team have supper with us?", so we sat with them and ate and chatted, and she politely pretended that we weren't _im_ politely keeping our eyes on our screens and our fingers on our keyboards when we weren't actually conveying food to our mouths.

At about seven P.M., when Buffy had begged off for a couple of hours to go to a nearby Catholic church that actually had in-person evening services, we'd all been on the go flat-out since not long past dawn, with that meal a distant but fond memory. With her gone, Shaun and I just looked at each other, each trying to summon the energy to get back to work.

He reached for his laptop before I reached for mine, and was on the verge of opening it when I impulsively said, "Not yet." Mine was closed in front of me; I pushed it a couple of symbolic inches away.

He frowned at me--not annoyed, just puzzled and tired enough that he thought he might be missing something. "I thought we were doing admin stuff tonight."

"That's the plan. Just...maybe not yet."

Shaun gave me a skeptical look. " _You're_ taking a break?"

" _We're_ taking a break, if you want to." I got up, stretched, and threw myself down on the bed. For just one second, I let my eyes close--one precious moment of reprieve from how they were burning with exhaustion--and then I forced them open and looked him expectantly.

His smile was the first one I'd seen reach his eyes in days. It didn't make him look cheerful, exactly, but I'd settle for "less run down and haunted". He got up and checked the room locks, making sure the chain was in place, and switched off the few lights he'd had on. That eased a different kind of burning in my eyes; sunglasses can only do so much. My involuntary sigh of relief was drowned out by his boots thumping to the floor as he climbed onto the bed with me.

We touched each other quickly and thoroughly, checking in with one another's aches and bruises. I had none of the latter, for once, but Shaun had enough for both of us. It was a habitual preliminary investigation that neither of us tend to see as foreplay, so I was taken slightly aback when I ran my hand over his hip and felt the way he responded. I touched him there again, more slowly. He didn't feel desperate--and he shouldn't, honestly. He has perfectly good hands, for one thing, and for another, over the last couple of weeks we'd both shamelessly resorted to getting each other off as part of an attempt to force sleep.

That was a more effective tactic for me, since one of Shaun's "typical male" tendencies is that orgasms make him sleepy. He has to work harder when he's trying it on me. I tend to get relaxed but stay alert, so he has to keep me in bed long enough for the rest of my sleep-deprived body to notice the relaxation and take advantage of my weakened defenses.

"Eager" was a better word for what I felt radiating off him now. Eager and needy and a dozen other things that made me dizzy with the urge to touch him. "Hey," I said, keeping my voice low. "I'm right here."

"No, you're not." He grabbed my hips as he flipped onto his back, pulling me so I was lying on top of him, nose to nose in the dark. " _Now_ you're right here."

"Whatever, pedant." I started kissing him and he followed my lead without another word, trading shallow, teasing kisses. It made him moan back into my mouth while he loosened my shirt and slid his hands up the back to explore my bare skin. Shaun's incapable of passivity--which is fine by me--but he was cooperative and hungry, feeling me up without trying to hurry things along.

We're both bossy by nature; we came by it honestly, growing up together. In most areas of our lives, it's obvious which of us gets the final word, but in bed? Not so much. Negotiating in the moment is too much like work for either of our tastes, so as a rule, whichever of us feels more like running the show goes for it first. If we want to try something outside of our usual repertoire, that gets advance discussion, but we _know_ how to make each other feel good.

Making out, I gather, is depressingly underrated. Not to knock sex, but first I wanted to savor lying there with him, stroking and kissing and gradually going from pleasant squirming to grinding hard into each other. It was almost a game, seeing which of us would crack first and start peeling clothes off. It was also a game we'd pay for, with so much to do and nowhere near enough hours to do it in, but God, we needed to focus on each other for a while.

###

Shaun cracked first on the clothes front, apparently deciding he wanted access to my breasts badly enough to let me tease him about it, but once he did, we were both naked in short order. We spent a while under the blankets, on our sides and facing each other, putting in some extra makeout time long after we were both more than ready to turn intensely sexual snuggling into some form of sex. But we still lingered, doing all the things that by definition can't be part of a quickie: kissing each other all over, pausing from time to time to just _look_ at each other.

He made a pained sound when he touched my ribcage and belly. I've been comfortably in an average weight range for my height since my final growth spurt, but if I had to guess, I was now somewhere at the very low end of that range just from not taking the time to eat. I acknowledged his reaction with a nod and a shrug-- _I know, but what can you do?_ \--and he let it go without saying a word. We were both more likely to suffer from lack of sleep than lack of food.

Instead, he said, "Want me to grab a condom?" Needing to ask put a chagrined look on his face; usually he knows my cycle as well as I do, which means knowing when we're in the handful of days each month when I'm extra paranoid and can't make myself trust my implant entirely. He says it's the most irrational thing about me, but given everything we'd have to go through if I got pregnant, he's more than willing to respect it.

I shook my head. "That's okay." I put my hand on his hip again, waiting to see if he was going to offer a preference for what we did next. Shaun stayed quiet, so I nudged him onto his back and straddled his thighs. My skin prickled happily at the appreciative way he raked his eyes over my body, and at the way his hips pushed up when I reached down to touch him.

"Found you," I murmured. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, squeezing in a way he likes--for the most part. Sometimes he lets me keep doing it. Sometimes it's a recipe for going from cowgirl to missionary, if he decides I'm in a mood where I won't mind being grabbed, flipped over, and fucked in a way we'd both jokingly describe as "punishing".

I didn't try to keep doing it for long. Instead, I knelt right over him and pressed the very tip of his cock against myself, circling it there until his eyes rolled back. He groaned when I pushed down onto him and took _just_ the head in. "You're being a fucking tease," he grumbled, voice low with something that sounded like anger. It wasn't, not at all; it was pure, uncomplicated lust that made me smile wide for him.

"I am not. I'm making sure we both remember where all the nerve endings are."

"My bad. You're being greedy."

"If you say so." I gave his body a lingering look, toying with the light hair on his chest while I took his cock a bit further, just enough to remind us both how good it felt to have that so-slight penetration. Answer: _really good_. I wasn't kidding about the nerve endings; when Shaun's the one in a teasing mood, he's been known to get me off without going any further inside me than he was now. Funny how that's fair game if he's the one doing the tormenting.

It wasn't as if he wasn't enjoying it plenty too. He wasn't trying to push, literally or otherwise, but his hips were shifting rhythmically, getting him a bit more friction.

That gave me a better idea of what I was in the mood for, and despite his complaints, Shaun didn't seem inclined to vote for something different. "How worn out are you?" I asked, sliding my hands up his chest.

"Physically?" He caught one of my hands and twined his fingers into mine, tugging me further down so he could kiss my knuckles. "Not very. It's not like I've done anything but desk work today."

I pushed back on his cock a little to make sure he was deep enough in me to stay put while I lowered myself most of the way on him, holding just a bit of my own weight on my knees and elbows. "Fuck me from there?"

He laughed. "Promise you're not suggesting that just so we're multi-tasking?" I tilted my head quizzically at him. "Giving me a workout here so I don't go down to the weights room later, so you get to keep me at my computer longer?"

"Don't give me ideas if you don't want me to try them some other time," I said. "But nope, that hadn't occurred to me."

"So you're in the mood to watch me work my ass off to please you, huh?" His eyes gleamed as he arched up, and his expression became downright smug when his cock slipped the rest of the way into me with ease. "You're so wet," he said, almost offhandedly--not exactly news to either of us, but given how his voice sounds when he says things like that, he's usually more than welcome to give me a detailed play-by-play of how wet I am, how hard I'm making him, and so on.

The words don't matter to me. What matters is that the more turned on he is, the more likely he is to talk to me in that tone, and it hits something deep in my brain that makes me want to shove him against a wall and kiss him until we're both frantic to take things further.

"I'm _always_ in that mood," I pointed out, and he laughed again, because it was true. It doesn't have to be "to please me"--although that never hurts--but I love watching him exert himself, losing himself in motion and activity. I love his focus, and the warm smell of fresh, clean sweat on his skin. I love it in a way that I suspect is at least tangentially related to how he loves watching me get thoroughly engrossed in my work, although fortunately for both of us that makes him feel affectionate, not "I have to fuck you _right now_ " horny, which is how I respond to him.

Shaun reached up and smoothed my bangs back. "Then yes, Miss Mason, I think we can work with that."

"Work with that" was an understatement. We weren't trying to take things especially slowly, since our workload wasn't going anywhere and Buffy was likely to check back in with us before she went to sleep. Shaun spent a good--a _very_ good--few minutes getting me off with his hands, and then moved on to what I'd asked for.

What I'd asked for really wasn't easy; I could never have done it myself, even if I had the right anatomy. He was sweating with the effort, and the unsteady surge of his hips between my thighs was translating into a marvelous rhythm inside me. I was letting him set whatever pace he wanted, doing my part by putting as little weight on him as possible. There was an urgency to every motion that said he was painfully close to coming, fighting a little to drag it out even though his muscles would be burning with exertion.

I watched his face, and I trembled inside at everything I could see there: the focus on maintaining the physical effort; the desire to please me, both out of love and out of the satisfaction he takes from knowing he's succeeded; the pleasure and release his body would be begging for by now; and the need to be close and then closer to me, a need that was driving his movements and his voice.

More than anything else, it was the desperate, hitching way he was talking to me that had my nerves on fire. His fingers were digging hard into my hips while he fucked up into me, gasping the same words with each thrust: "Take it, take it, take it", over and over. I pressed my cheek against his, kissing the corner of his mouth and along his jaw, but I wasn't about to interrupt by kissing him properly. Not when he sounded like that, begging and demanding and _needing_. "Take it, George."

"Yes," I whispered back with each repetition, making his hands clench harder.

I had a sudden full-blown craving to trade places, to be on my back or my stomach under him while he worked that hard. There was no way it was happening, not with Shaun so close to orgasm, and that was fine too; a small part of me knew it would probably hurt if all the force behind his thrusts was going straight into my body, rather than half of it going to sheer momentum. But I couldn't have it, so there was no harm in wanting it.

"Yes," I said again, pressing down to meet him. "Yes, keep doing that, I want it--" I didn't even know if we meant the same thing by "it"; I wasn't sure I meant anything more specific than everything he was doing.

We both cried out a little when he came, even though what I was feeling was a different kind of pleasure. I love it when he loses control because it's _so_ easy for him to let go and abandon himself to whatever we're doing. When we get that far along with sex, he comes close to literally not thinking about anything else--not work, not zombies, not a single thing other than me. I love how he throws himself into the sensation, the way he does with most experiences.

Shaun loves making me lose control too, because it's a side of me no one but him will ever see, but what he loves most is that he has my undivided attention in a way he usually doesn't get. It's why he loves getting me so close to coming that I can taste it and then keeping me right on that edge until I want to scream. He likes that it takes talent; he likes that keeping me from orgasming for a while makes it feel that much better; and he likes that it means I'm thinking about _him_ and absolutely nothing else. I'm always thinking about him in one way or another, but that doesn't mean he always wants to share that space in my head.

###

Later, when I was lying completely on him, rubbing my cheek against his sternum and laughing to myself at how his chest hair tickled--the exhausted giddiness that comes in the wake of really good sex--I said, "Can you unpack that for me?" I kissed him without lifting my head. "What you wanted so badly? Or is it one of those 'oh God I'm too close to coming to know what I'm saying' things?"

Shaun chuckled. "No, I know what it was." He caressed the small of my back, fingers circling the lowest ridges of my spine. "It's a mix of stuff."

"Like what?"

"Partly the obvious." He shivered with something like desire, even though the odds of his body being up for another round in the next half hour or so were slim, even if we'd had the time. We weren't sixteen anymore. "Wanting to feel my whole cock inside you. Wanting you to _want_ me to come in you. Wanting you to take everything I can give you."

"You're such a boy, Shaun Mason."

"I'm a _visceral_ boy," he pointed out. "It's how I'm wired. And I said 'partly'.

"What's the rest, then?"

He took a moment to think about it. "When I'm on top of you, I guess it's mostly that. But when you're on me, it's like, I want all of that, plus I want you to take what you want from _me_. I love doing stuff to you, but it's hot watching you use my body to make _yourself_ feel that good."

I snuggled closer, already ruing the fact that we needed to get back out of bed almost immediately. "Were you hoping I'd come again? Because I could have if I'd been trying."

Shaun touched my chin to make me look at his face, and then pointedly rolled his eyes. "You know exactly how much I like getting you off, so that's kind of a stupid question. Very out of character." He poked the tip of my nose lightly. "But you were obviously enjoying it, so my manly pride isn't damaged or anything. Don't worry."

I made a face. "When do I ever worry about your 'manly pride'?"

"Good point."

We traded grins, and then I reluctantly started peeling myself off him. "Shower dibs."

"Like I'm gonna fight you for it when we didn't use a condom?" His smile became unfairly suggestive for a time when I had no choice about getting out of bed. "Go get all pristine and professional, and then I'll follow your excellent example."

I'd made it as far as lying beside him, not on him. The shower seemed far away, despite the bed being close enough to the bathroom that I could have touched the door without getting up entirely. "If Buffy gets back while I'm washing up, put on more than underwear before you let her in."

"Spoilsport. I keep _telling_ you I want to add a blonde to my conquests."

"Pig." I shook my head. "You are so unbelievably lucky that I'm not insecure about you."

Shaun didn't bat an eye or otherwise change expression, but his whole demeanor shifted. "If you were, I wouldn't say that shit."

"I know." I kissed him, simultaneously savoring the way he immediately melted into it and feeling a pang over it. We really needed to be doing this more often, and with the way Ryman's campaign was going, I was pretty sure sex and cuddling and anything of the sort were going to get a lot _less_ frequent, at least for the foreseeable future.

That was the job. Maybe things weren't going the way we'd expected when we signed on, but we'd known from the second we heard about the position that it would swallow our lives whole if we landed it.

Expecting something doesn't magically make it easy to deal with. I kept kissing Shaun, stroking his hair with one hand and his shoulder with the other, and finally he was the one who pulled gently away. "Go on, George," he said.

I nodded, and forced myself out of bed and into the bathroom without looking back at him. The world wasn't going to stop demanding our attention just because I wished it would--just once, just for a little while.


	6. (Shaun) Distraction

Given that I spent years being desperately attracted to George before we finally started sleeping together, I would've expected the fact that we'd been having sex for a couple of months now to make it _easier_ to get work done with her when I wanted to get laid, not harder. After all, the fact that we were sleeping together meant that if I got in the mood while we were doing our homework, the night might end on a really good note, right?

But in practice, it had been easier back before we acted on our feelings for each other. I'd simply known sex wasn't gonna happen, and so I got through whatever needed doing--while trying not to let on that I was horny enough to climb the walls--and dealt with it by beating off after we'd gone to our separate beds.

Now that sex _was_ a possibility, I had no way of knowing if it was in the cards or not--and George couldn't help much with that, since she didn't know yet if the writing bug was going to grab her when we finished our schoolwork. And unlike before, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew how her neck tasted; how soft her breasts were; how sensitive the crooks of her knees and elbows were; how it felt to have her slide down onto my cock, taking me slow inch by inch.

Back when I didn't know those things, I wouldn't have believed it was possible to want her even more than I did then. I doubt anybody would've labeled me "innocent" after I was twelve or thirteen--if then--but in that sense, I had been. I'd been sure since the moment the thought first crossed my mind that having sex with George would be life-changing, but that didn't mean I knew what it would be _like_.

I gave up after about twenty minutes of picking away at calculus, each problem taking longer than the last, even though it wasn't the math that was getting harder. "Hey, George?"

"Hmm?" She didn't look up.

"I'm taking a break. I need a shower."

That got her attention, earning me a puzzled frown. "Right now?"

"I can't focus," I admitted. Holy crap, I was _blushing_.

George stared at me, confusion giving way to--I studied her face, not sure I could even remember how it felt to look at her mouth and not need to kiss her--a combination of amusement, irritation, and affection.

"Having all your blood going to the wrong head must be distracting, huh?" Now she sounded downright nonchalant, like she hadn't just licked her lips in a way she only did when she knew _exactly_ what seeing it would do to me.

I exhaled and gave up trying to tune out the way I felt below the waist. Hard: check. Aching: check. Annoyed by how tight my pants felt, and unable to stop thinking how weird the annoyance was since I desperately wanted my dick somewhere even tighter: check. Lightheaded and increasingly obsessed with the mental picture of unzipping George's pants, pushing them down to her knees, and bending her over her desk? Check, check, and check.

George calmly reached over and touched my crotch, massaging through my jeans. "If we go to bed, I won't want to come back to Spanish," she said. "If you shower now, will you still be up for it later? Or, you know, up for it again?"

"Pretty sure," I said faintly. She was kneading me like a cat, mostly with her palm. If I'd been asked in some kind of survey, I wouldn't have filed that kind of touch under "sexual", but it was; when George touched me with that kind of intent, there was no mistaking it, and it was sexual no matter where her hands wound up.

"That's for me?" she asked.

I laughed. "You know it is. One nice, fresh boner, ready to unwrap at your convenience."

"Mmm." Her touch lightened, turned teasing. "Don't go shower."

"Just to be clear, you're saying 'Shaun, I know you can't finish your homework, but be a dear and entertain yourself by thinking about fucking me until I'm ready for you to do it for real'?"

"Something like that." She stood up, taking her hand away, and bent to talk into my ear, in a matter-of-fact tone that no one but me would notice was different from her usual briskness. But after only two months of sleeping together, my reptile brain was already _very_ used to the difference. She could read the dictionary in that voice and my deepest instincts would still announce she was talking about sex.

Those instincts go into overdrive when she says something like what came out of her mouth next: "Just give me an hour or so, and then you can fuck me senseless, okay?"

A couple months of sex had taken the edge off the novelty factor. That let me keep my voice steady. "It's a date."

"Good." Still cool as a cucumber, George straddled me and settled on my lap, squeezing her thighs against my hips as she very deliberately ground herself against me.

"Fucking _hell_ , Georgia," I grumbled.

She leaned closer, _almost_ kissing me. I put a hand behind her head and pulled her the rest of the way in. That made her wriggle on my lap, which made me kiss her harder. She hummed something tuneless and pulled back enough to say, "I like it when you want me." Her hips rolled slowly. "I like this."

Since _she_ was the one who'd sat on _me_ , I saw no reason not to put my hands on her ass and hold her there while I pushed up against her. She laughed quietly and rubbed her cheek along mine, deliberately scraping her skin against the beginnings of stubble.

I caught her earlobe gently between my teeth, then flicked just the tip of my tongue around the inner whorls of her ear. Her entire body undulated against mine in a very satisfying way. "I'll just go wait for you, then," I said, leaning back to caress her sides between my hands.

"You do that." She pushed herself off my lap and sat back at her desk. "I'll be quick."

"Okay." I lay down on her bed and watched her work, idly rubbing my palm against my crotch. I didn't go out of my way to draw her attention to that, but I didn't try to hide it, either. A couple of times George stopped what she was doing and looked over, no more subtle about watching me toy with myself than I was about doing it.

I couldn't _only_ think about fucking her, not if I didn't want to get myself even more uncomfortably worked up, so I timed her. It was forty-three minutes--not the hour she'd estimated--before she saved her work and shut the laptop she did most of her schoolwork on.

She stood and stretched, rubbing the back of her neck. "Where were we?"

"Making plans to make each other feel really good," I said helpfully.

"That sounds familiar." George nodded at the edge of her bed while she took her pants and underwear off. "Sit there?" she said, tugging her top off over her head. I obliged while she dimmed her main monitors and switched about half of her lights off, freeing her to dispense with her sunglasses. "Perfect."

Now wearing only her bra, she bent over, pushed my thighs apart, and knelt between them, resting her head on my lap. She reached back and touched her bra clasp, which I happen to know she can not only unfasten but _fasten_ one-handed if she really has to. "Help me with this?"

I undid the clasp and let her bra fall to the floor, leaving her naked. Her back arched sharply as I ran my fingers down her spine. She steadied herself by exhaling slowly, breath warm against my hard-on--which was getting more and more insistent about not being trapped in my clothes anymore.

I didn't need to say anything. She was already busy taking care of the situation, and once she had me exposed, she pressed her cheek to my cock. A couple months of experience _wasn't_ enough that I was used to that; I choked a little at her bare skin on mine, and George turned her head to smile up at me. "This part's for the wait," she said, and turned back. She kissed the head of my cock once, and with no more preamble than that, slipped the first few inches into her mouth.

My favorite way to have sex is to fuck her, no question. But in terms of sheer sensation, there's nothing really like having her mouth on me. I closed my eyes and tangled my fingers in her hair, which was just long enough to curl in the way that irritates her so much. She'd be swearing at it and threatening to hack it off within a week, but in the meantime I could enjoy playing with it.

The delighted noise she made sent a rush of extra pleasure through me. I've fingered her immediately afterwards--or during--often enough to know she means it when she says going down on me turns her on. She likes the intimacy of it, and the raw physicality; I know that because she's told me.

What she's never needed to tell me is that she likes how vulnerable it makes us to each other. She's the one who looks the part, especially when she's on her knees and I've got my hands on her head. But it also puts in her a position to deal out incredible pleasure or pain. It doesn't matter that she's never going to opt for pain; my subconscious knows she _could_ , and that makes me appreciate the debilitating pleasure even more.

Not that I was actually thinking about any of that. What I was thinking didn't even resemble words. My focus was entirely on the sensation of George's lips parting to take me in, gentle and intense and dizzyingly warm. She kissed and caressed and sucked until I half-believed I'd lose my mind if I didn't come soon--or if I didn't at least start moving, start pushing deep into her to heighten the pleasure and the closeness.

George is a staunch believer in teasing me sexually for her own entertainment, but she usually has the common courtesy not to do it without warning. She stopped blowing me before the craving got too intense, giving my cock one last, lingering lick from base to tip before she climbed up beside me and pulled me down on the bed.

We spent the next while kissing and caressing each other, sometimes wrestling a little and laughing about it--old habits die hard, and sure, I "win" most of the time, but the look on George's face when she gets me pinned would be enough to make me let her win if she'd let me get away with that bullshit. When she _does_ manage it, it's for real.

And eventually, when I'd gotten her into a position where her wrists were pinned over her head and my fingers were too deep and busy inside her for her to really fight back, she sighed in feigned annoyance and said, "Are you going to fuck me or what?"

I couldn't resist baiting her a little, when she was turned on enough to be getting impatient. "Are you that desperate to get back to your homework?"

The room was dim enough that her eyes were mostly shadows. That didn't mean I couldn't feel the stern look she raked over me. "If you're not careful, I'll multi-task."

"Oh?" I let go of her wrists and pulled my fingers out of her, pressing my palm hard between her legs before taking my hand away entirely. "How would you do that?"

George rolled over and pushed herself up on her hands and knees, and didn't answer until I had my hands on her hips and was easing my cock into her. "I could practice my verb conjugations," she said, gasping the last syllable when I started moving. "I could do it out loud--" Her voice broke and steadied "--until you make me forget what I'm doing."

"Not a very effective studying technique," I said, moving one hand to caress her back.

She made a pleased sound and let her head drop forward. "Maybe not, but it'd be an effective way of making you work to break my concentration."

"You have a warped idea of fun." My voice was unsteady too. After two months of sex, I thought I was getting a sense of which aspects I'd get used to and which would never stop being amazing no matter how often we did it. I've been hugging her my whole life, and I _know_ that never gets old; it was every bit as inconceivable to think I could ever stop loving the sight or feel of her naked body.

"Well, yeah. I grew up surrounded by Irwins." She was moving with me now, encouraging me with every shift in her hips and the increasing harshness of her breathing. "That's a good angle. Can you--"

I reached around her before she finished asking, getting my fingers involved. From there it was barely any time at all before she came, each spasm of pleasure making her clench harder around my cock and getting me that much closer to orgasming with her--close enough that a couple of hard thrusts would get me there.

I bit my lip instead, fighting to hold off just a little longer, just until George was trembling with reaction. She's not the only one who appreciates our mutual vulnerability, and I love seeing her like that: shaken with pleasure, suspended in that moment when her body's still deciding whether she wants more, or if she's comfortably exhausted and sated.

When I stopped trying to fight it, the orgasm that followed left me in pretty much the same condition George was in, panting and shaking and wanting nothing more than to wrap myself around her.

"You didn't finish your math homework," she said, once we were lying down and catching our breath.

"Nope." I kissed her shoulder and snuggled against her back, caressing her breasts with one hand and her hip with the other. "I'll do it after you kick me out of bed."

George grumbled under her breath and buried her face in a pillow, unable to deny that that was exactly what was going to happen once her cuddly mood wore off. I laughed and settled in to enjoy it while it lasted.


	7. (Georgia) The Comfort of the Familiar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is set during _Feed_ , with a few spoilers up to about halfway through the book.

It was three A.M. when Shaun and I finally had our hotel room to ourselves. Since we'd last been in bed, we'd acquired a new on-site staff member, one Rick Cousins; seen Peter Ryman officially become the Republican presidential candidate; and done preliminary coverage on the probably-heroic death of our candidate's eldest child.

The site was in the best shape it could be, under the circumstances. Three A.M. for us was midmorning for Mahir, thank God, and earlier I'd ordered him to bed for five hours so he'd be able to cover for me when I finally fell down. Without discussion, Shaun had handed Becks back to me temporarily, and the two of them had chosen a pair of his other Irwins to do basic Newsie work under her supervision, since she knew them and I didn't. We hadn't cross-trained her deliberately, but I was incredibly grateful for her now.

Shaun wasn't in much need of his staff, anyway; media wasn't being allowed near the Ryman farm yet, so there was no way to get a great Irwin angle on it, and for now it was _the_ story. The rest of his staff and most of the Fictionals were scrambling to keep the site's discussion boards well-enough moderated that nothing burst into flame.

That all meant Shaun had been working his ass off with me all day, but it wasn't work he could channel his adrenaline into, and he was exhausted and jittery by the time we were alone. I was still plenty wound up myself; my body was more than ready to collapse, but my thoughts were going in a dozen directions and I didn't have the mental resources left to settle them down.

I sat cross-legged on the bed we were sleeping in and watched him pace; sometimes we get lucky and the repetitiveness calms at least one of us. I even managed to sit there for nearly five minutes before I shook my head, got back up, and rummaged quickly through a pocket in Shaun's open suitcase.

"Come help me with something," I said, grabbing his wrist. Perplexed, he followed me into the bathroom, where I kicked the door closed and pushed him back against it. "You know the deal." Ordinarily I would've tried to sound stern, but I didn't have the energy. I reached up and touched his face. "If you joke about me screwing someone else, you've got to compensate me."

That "deal" is a game, and we enforce it strictly. Usually it's me teasing him about groupies and paying him back for it, and he's not pushy about _when_ payback happens, but sooner or later--usually sooner--our moods line up and he collects.

After the day we'd had, it would've been unsurprising if Shaun had forgotten his teasing insinuations about my reasons for inviting Rick to our room, but he so rarely has an excuse to say that sort of thing that he clearly _did_ remember; his lips quirked with weary but sincere amusement.

He didn't ask if I was sure, despite the fact that I was exhausted to the point of being unsteady on my feet. We both trust each other to say no, and to set our own lines; we've had sex when I wasn't _as_ eager as he was, but never when either of us didn't want to.

We didn't say anything at all, in fact. I stripped my pants off and hitched myself up to sit on the edge of the counter beside the sink. Shaun's shirt joined my pants on the floor, and then he was standing between my thighs, pulling me close and leaning down for a kiss. I gave it to him with undisguised urgency, twining my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. He responded with equal neediness and a silent sigh of relief. Quick and dirty sex would burn the worst of his adrenaline off and would get us to bed and to sleep faster--sleep we both desperately needed. But we also needed the tension release and, most importantly, the comfort.

We'd never even met Rebecca Ryman, but we couldn't distance ourselves entirely from her death or her parents' horrific grief on what should have been a joyful day. We both liked Peter and Emily too much for that, and while Shaun could have respected Rebecca's death on a professional level, she hadn't _been_ a professional. She wasn't someone who went after death with guns and other tools, knowing death might turn and catch her. She was a girl standing on the edge of adulthood and dreaming of her future, and now both she and her future were ashes.

Her death was a tragedy. It was also enough like an Irwin's death that I had all the more need to hold Shaun and make him show me how alive he was.

We made out greedily, practically inhaling each other. Shaun unbuttoned my shirt by feel and pushed it off my shoulders to pool across my back; I would've had to let go of him to take it off entirely, and that simply wasn't happening. He left my bra alone to keep us from getting tangled in the straps, and we kept kissing and grinding into each other. Heat radiated off his bare skin, and he was hard between my legs, and it was precisely what I needed. As long as he was there, things could still be okay.

"Please tell me you know exactly where a condom is," he muttered between kisses. I nodded and reached into my shirt pocket for the condom I'd fished out of his suitcase before dragging him into the bathroom with me.

Shaun took it without another word, letting go of me and leaning back just far enough to unzip his pants and shove them and his boxers to the floor. He was fast but careful about getting the condom on--they're not the only protection we use, but there's no point if we use them wrong. Then, while I held onto him loosely, he yanked my panties aside and pushed his cock into me, surging against my body and kissing me again.

He could only keep one arm around me; the other hand was occupied with holding my underwear out of the way. It pulled the fabric tight enough on one side that it was digging right into me, but since I didn't care, neither did he. We were both desperate by then, and too weary to think. We kissed and fucked and squirmed against each other, and right before he came, Shaun let go of me again to thumb my clit roughly, pushing me into a brief but intense orgasm that lasted until his own overwhelmed him.

We clung to each other afterwards, probably for as long as the whole act of sex had lasted, just listening to each other breathe. "Let's go to bed," I said eventually. Shaun nodded and pulled out to deal with the condom--for which I was extra appreciative now, since it meant most of the mess was contained and I could delay my shower until we crawled back out of bed, when I'd need its help to wake up. We washed up perfunctorily and went back into the main hotel room, pausing only to pull on clean underwear--and one of Shaun's t-shirts, in my case--in the name of not being completely naked if we had to answer the door in a hurry.

All in all, less than half an hour had passed. We could have used that much more sleep, but I didn't regret trading it for how much better I felt otherwise. I didn't have to ask Shaun if it had been worth it for him. He was enough calmer now that he was able to fall into bed with me without fidgeting.

We didn't cuddle once the lights were mercifully off and my sunglasses had been relegated to the bedside table. But in the dark our hands found each other and squeezed under the blanket, as if by holding on to each other we could hold everything else together.


End file.
